Abstract
Besides all sharing an extraordinary high (i.e., up to ~450 times) sweetening power as compared to sucrose and while presenting strong similarities in their molecular structures, molecules belonging to the family of diterpene glycosides (i.e., the secondary metabolites of Stevia rebaudiana) differ in specific structural details that strongly impact on their levels of sweetness and bitter aftertaste. Given the nutritional and pharmacological benefits of steviol secondary metabolites as natural dietetic and anti-diabetic remedies, extraction and purification of steviol glycosides from plant material are nowadays widely spread among many countries. However, an unpleasant bitter aftertaste, which is linked to a genetic variation in human bitter taste receptors, hampers the full exploitation of such benefits and calls for a prompt improvement in organoleptic property control of stevia products. A deeper understanding of the molecular structure of different steviol glycosides and the consequent development of promptly measurable criteria for the organoleptic performance of their mixtures will support processing optimization and control of taste profiles within desired yields. The present research aimed at establishing Raman spectroscopic algorithms for quantitative characterizations of raw stevia-based sweetener products. First, a series of twelve high-purity diterpene glycosides were analyzed by high spectrally resolved Raman spectroscopy and their spectra analyzed in order to establish a complete Raman library of molecular structures. Then, quantitative spectroscopic parameters were built up and applied to characterize the organoleptic property of five different commercially available samples including the recently developed Rebaudioside M isoform. Raman spectroscopy was confirmed as a versatile analytical technique that could be used for quantitative quality control tasks on the production line and for prompt in situ characterizations of purchased products.